'Too popular' green scheme closed

By Sarah Mukherjee Environment correspondent, BBC News

Environmental campaigners say they are astonished at the government's decision to suspend a scheme which gave grants to schools, hospitals and other public buildings to switch to renewable energy.

The Low Carbon Buildings Programme has apparently been too popular - particularly with those hoping to install solar panels.

"Is it working?"

"Yes - I think so - the yellow one is."

Two young children pore over a rather unseasonal little cardboard Christmas tree, as the LED lights that adorn it glow rather dully under cloudy skies.

The flickering glow that the lights emit is coming not from a plug, but from the sky - in the shape of a small, palm-sized solar photovoltaic (PV) panel, held towards the lowering clouds.

And this might be as close as the Eco-club pupils of Great Missenden School in Buckinghamshire get to seeing solar PV in action.

Staff had hoped that their application for a grant to put up solar PV panels would be considered, but now they've been told they've missed out.

"They've run out of money - it's been very popular," says Margaret Dixon, the school's librarian, who's been heading up the application.

The government appears to be taking the renewables industry apart Ed Matthew Friends of the Earth

"It would obviously be lovely if we could get some money because it's such a wonderful technology and such an example to the local community to have it happening here at the school.

"We were also hoping for solar panels on the church as well, which would have been great for Great Missenden as a whole."

The school is hoping it might get some funding from the National Lottery, but, like many others, it now finds itself having to look for other forms of cash for its solar plans.

Those within the renewable energy industry say this state of affairs is no surprise.

The Renewable Energy Association says it warned the government in February that the money within the scheme was going to run out for PV.

They say cash allocated for other renewable technologies is likely to remain unspent, because nobody has applied for it.

But the government has not re-allocated this cash to the ultra-popular solar PV, so, the association says, it is likely that about